


The Pebbles and the Doctor

by SenoraKitty



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:31:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenoraKitty/pseuds/SenoraKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing prompt from Navydream over on Tumblr.</p><p>"So penguins bring rocks to their mates and Sherlock somehow fond out about this… and suddenly, John starts finding all sorts of pebbles, starting from the ordinary to a rare moon stone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pebbles and the Doctor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NavyDream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NavyDream/gifts).



> This was supposed to be a ficlet! A little tiny ficlet! What on earth happened? How did it blow up into this, why did I actually research gemstones? WTF?!
> 
> Holy crap, I'm gonna gag on all this fluff. It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!
> 
> The fic itself is complete.

Rocks, no, not rocks, pebbles. They were turning up every where, all over the flat. The first one was found under his pillow, like some dysfunctional take on the tooth fairy.

John shifted in the early waking hours of the morning, his alarm had not gone off yet, but he was beginning to stir. He rolled onto his side and slid his hand under his pillow, his fingers brushing against something hard and jagged. Still mostly asleep he frowned curiously, and began to fiddle with the small object in his hand. It was small, rough, and it felt like some of it was coming off on his fingers. “What the hell?” He mumbled, flipping over his pillow to see what he was holding.

There in the palm of his hand was a rock, not even a full centimeter in diameter. It looked like an ordinary chunk of white concrete.

John's still drowsy mind began to work as he stared down at the rock. He kept a very strict regiment of not taking off his clothes while he was on his bed. He even had a chair in which he normally stripped off his clothes so as not to carry the grit and grime of London onto his nice clean bed cloths. So how this small stone got into his bed, under his pillow of all places, was a mystery to him.

He set the pebble on his night table, picked up his phone, turned off his alarm, and went about beginning his day.

The second pebble that showed up was in the toe of John's right shoe. At first he thought to just throw the wayward object away.

Standing over the waste basket, in his room, he took a moment to actually look at the small stone. It was evident that it was no ordinary pebble that happened to find its way into his shoe. The lines of browns and amber were neatly polished, and radiated with a natural warm glow. 'Tiger's eye,' John's mind supplied him with the name of the gem.

Dumbfounded he set the gem next to the other stone on his bedside table. Staring at the two contrasting stones, he began to wonder just what was going on? He figured at this point that it had to be Sherlock's doing, but how to go about getting the man to open up and tell him what Sherlock was thinking? Coming out and asking the mad genius, what he was up to, was out of the question. It would be like pulling teeth from an alligator. Sherlock was a steel trap when it came to secrets, and if he wanted John to know what this was about, he would have mentioned something by now.

With an exasperated sigh, John came to a decision. He would let Sherlock continue to play his game, and do his experiments with rocks, until the detective got tired of try to baffle John with them.

It went on for another few weeks. John would find gems and rocks scattered all throughout the flat. On his chair, in his pockets, in the bathroom next to his shaving kit, even in his RAMC mug in the tea cupboard. They were every where he looked, all different sizes, shapes, and colours of varying pebbles. Ranging from simple rocks, one could find on the street, to small precious gemstones.

He had them all lined up on his bedside table, in the order they came. They always came in a pattern, simple rock, then gemstone. At first he berated himself for letting this silly game of collecting rocks continue. Eventually though, John couldn't help but feel a sense of giddy anticipation as he would go about his day wondering where he would find the next stone, and what it would look like. 

One day it suddenly stopped. John didn't find a pebble that day or the next. A few days turned into a week, and still nothing turned up. The last piece of rock, John had received, looked similar to the first one that was under his pillow. He wanted to ask Sherlock what the whole ordeal was about, but even formulating the question in his own mind sounded ridiculous.

John began to think that maybe he just wasn't looking hard enough. Perhaps, Sherlock had decided to make their little seek-and-find a bit more challenging for the doctor. He set about looking in every nook and cranny of the flat he could think of. Nothing. He didn't understand it, he had foolishly gotten sentimental about rocks, and a game he knew was going to come to an eventual end.

Disappointed, and dejected John sank into his chair across from Sherlock, who was flipping through the paper.

“Problem,” Sherlock inquired.

John bit his lip, trying to think the best way to go about this without sounding like a complete loon. “You ever have something happen to you, something good, then suddenly it stops happening, and you find, without realizing it, how much you wanted it to keep happening?” He knew he was babbling and not making any sense, but he couldn't think of a better way of explaining it.

Sherlock's eyes drifted from side to side as his mind worked to understand what John was saying. “No,” he finally drawled before going back to his paper.

“Right, of course you wouldn't.” He wanted to yell at Sherlock, exclaim that he knew it was him the whole time, and demand an explanation, but he knew that would do no good. He was frustrated, and he knew it was pointless to be. However, he couldn't help but feel hurt from the loss of comfort those little stones had given him. Each one was like a little sign, saying 'thinking of you.' Loath to admit it, but he missed the gift of those little pebbles.

Sherlock's phone pinged, and the detective set down the paper to snatch up his phone. “It's Lestrade, we got a case.” He announced and leapt from his chair, fingers flying across the screen as he typed out a reply.

“Coming,” John replied, as he took a bit more time getting out of his chair, and heading to the front door.

 

He was tired, his legs were sore, and he hated the gritty feel of muddy trousers as they clung to his legs. For a case that was over so quickly it sure took all of their energy to locate and chase down their assailant. John was exhausted, edgy, and down right beat. “I'm taking a shower.” He called down the stairs to Sherlock, before making his way past the kitchen and into the bathroom.

John emerged from the steamy bath more relaxed, and even more tired than he was before. “Bath is all yours.” He announced to Sherlock who was already in his night clothes sitting on his chair, silently tracking John's movements through the flat. John opted to skip out on his night time cuppa, and headed straight for bed.

Opening his bedroom door, he flipped on the lights, and froze. Sitting atop his pillow was a perfectly round blue bead. John made his way to his bed, and picked up the marble sized stone, turning it over in his palm. It was deep blue and, depending on how the light hit the stone, it would get a cyan to almost clear sheen across it. It was beautiful, like watching ocean waves crest into a medley of blues. His mind worked over his limited knowledge of gemstones. 'Agate?' What was it?

“...Moonstone.” Sherlock's baritone voice supplied from the doorway, causing John to jump slightly at it's sudden appearance.

“Moonstone...” John repeated, still in awe of the stone in his hand.

Sherlock pushed off the door frame, and sauntered closer. “Do you mind if I...” he gestured toward John's bed.

“Hm?” It took John a moment to understand what Sherlock was asking. “No, no go right ahead.”

Sherlock stretched out his lithe form across the far side of John's bed. “Come on,” he prompted, patting the empty space beside him.

Still holding the small gem in his fist, John hesitantly slid into the narrow space beside Sherlock. “So are you going to tell me what this is all about?” He asked, opening his hand to show Sherlock the blue moonstone.

Sherlock plucked the gem from his hand and studied it wistfully. “Do you remember that case at the zoo, where a biology student stole one of the penguin chicks, to raise it, and return it back into the wild?”

“The one that was with that crazy animal rights group? Yeah, I remember it. You slipped on the ice trying to chase the bastard through the exhibit. You nearly broke your neck.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes at the memory. He had used the momentum from the fall to slide across the ice and kick the student's legs out from under him. “If memory serves, I believe I fared a lot better than you and inspector Lestrade did.”

“That's a matter of opinion.” He and Lestrade hadn't dared to set foot on the ice, leaving the chase and capture to Sherlock. John bore a cheeky smile at the image of a lanky detective, all limbs and no co-ordination, wrestling and flailing about on the ice with their suspect. The video Lestrade took of the event was one of John's favorites.

Sherlock watched John's expression as the man recalled the case. He cleared his throat, drawing John's attention back to the conversation at hand. “If you remember there was a spiel carrying on about the courtship and mating habits of the Adelie penguin. The males gift their potential mates with a small round pebble- the more round the pebble the better.”

“So all this time you've been trying to romance me with pebbles?” John could not hold back a bark of laughter. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and the most brilliant man he had ever known, crawling on the ground trying to pick out the prefect pebble to woo his doctor with. “How sentimental!”

“It was disgustingly sentimental,” Sherlock agreed. “I half expected to find you researching different types of gemstones to find out their meanings.”

“I'm not like you Sherlock, I can't look at every angle the way you can.” John admitted, as if this were something everyone should know by now. He rolled onto his side facing his flatmate, propping his head up in his hand. “So what do they mean?”

“Well this,” Sherlock started, reaching over John's shoulder. He leaned back holding up the first pebble John had found. “Is from outside St. Bart's, where we first met.”

John couldn't hold back a smile.

Sherlock continued, “and this,” he reached over again, “is tiger's eye. It propels you into action, dispelling fear. It also relieves doubt, and leaves you stronger.”

John's smile grew, he could see now where Sherlock was going with this. As Sherlock carried on, John found himself in awe of his flatmate. Each rock was from one of their cases. There was even one from Dewer's Hollow. How Sherlock had managed to go to Dartmoor and back, without John noticing, was a mystery. Every gemstone held a special meaning that, to Sherlock, correlated to the events of their cases. No, not to their cases, to them, to their relationship during those cases.

John's chest grew tight as he gained insight into how Sherlock perceived them. He never knew how introspective Sherlock was, or how romantic the man actually could be- in his own passive aggressive way. It dawned on him that this was flirting, Sherlock Holmes was flirting with him. It wasn't slight, it wasn't completely open, but it was monumental flirting. John felt that he would burst at the seams with the amount of love and adoration he was seeing in Sherlock.

Sherlock held up the last rock, he had given John the previous week. “This one is from right outside our doorstep.”

'Home, our home,' John thought as he stared at the chunk of rock. “And the moonstone,” he ask breathlessly, somehow unable to find his voice right at that moment.

Sherlock rolled the pebble around in his fingers, dreamily watching the colours shift.“Moonstones make up roughly sixty percent of the earth's crust. Needless to say, they are not a rare gemstone. However, deep blue moonstones are increasingly rare. Then there is their meaning...” John held out his hand, and Sherlock dropped the small bead into his palm.

“What's the meaning?”

Sherlock stared at the blue gem in John's hand, ocean blue surrounded by sand. The sight of it conjured up an image of an oasis in a desert. “Fulfillment of one's destiny, fulfilling a wish.”

John couldn't bring himself to meet the detective's eye. “What is it you wish for Sherlock?” Slender alabaster fingers slid over John's palm, trapping the small bead between their hands. 

Sherlock's voice was low and soft as he carefully calculated his next words. “For you to stay here with me...” 'forever, for the rest of our lives, until death due us part, until we're old and grey, until the end of the world.' There were so many ways he wanted to end his sentence, but instead Sherlock merely settled on, “for as long as possible.”

John met Sherlock's gaze then. Letting out a shuttering breath he nodded in agreement. “That's it, that's what I want too.”

Sherlock stayed frozen in place even as John's lips brushed against his in the faintest of kisses. Remotely it dawned on him that he was not being rejected, that instead John was accepting him and his proposal. Realization spurred him into action and he sealed his lips over John's, tentatively seeking entry into the other man's mouth with the lightest flicks of his tongue.

With a moan John granted Sherlock entry, welcoming the warm intruder with his own slick tongue. In the back of his mind he thought it might be a good idea to get a box to keep all of their pebble collection in. 'Sentiment over rocks,' the corners of his lips curled into a smile, even as he and Sherlock continued to explore each other.


End file.
